Fancy a game of Geek?

Mashable reported today: “Board Games on the iPad: Oh Yes, This is Going to be Big”.

Where I haven’t really been interested in the iPad to date, and it has been critiqued in the press and (just a little) by our Technical manager at this post.

Being a bit of a Board Game geek, I feel like I really need one..... like now!!
Unfortunately latest news is: I will have to wait a while seeing as the Apple iPad has already run out of stock for their Apple iPad launch day this Saturday (3rd of April). Indicating that interest is high, or potentially supply was low – not sure.

Those interested can find out more over at Mashable and keep up to date on the availability of iPads and their predictions on supply and demand with the guys over at Planet iPad.

Thinking out loud: If I note a few good reviews from a few good bloggers and journalists then I may have to put the iPad on my Amazon Wishlist.

Author: Sarah (bGame Geek) Griffiths

Questions, Questions, Questions ???

Our raison d’etre is to design & build bespoke websites and tailor effective online marketing campaigns in line with our clients business needs.

To meet client expectations we often ask quite a few blunt questions; the overall objective being to give our clients a site or/and a marketing campaign that is tailored to their goals and directly measured by real results.

The questions we ask

Off the top of my head, some of the questions we ask our clients are listed below:

Q: What is the purpose of your site?

Q: How are you going to use your site to overcome your overall business objectives?

Q: Are you developing on your website based on feedback on a usability study? If so how will you measure performance and the ROI of your investment?

Q: Does your website exist to lower your operating costs, if so how will you measure this?

Q: Will your website have a landing page to link into traditional media, if so what is the target market and how will you measure uptake?

Q: Does your website exist to help build your brand image? How will your personality be presented in text, are you talking in your copy on a one to one level?

All in all the above questions indicate measurement is key.

The Web Consultancy Approach

During web consultancy we also invite clients to consider the separate customer stages when designing or enhancing their websites.

Stage’s such as:

• Awareness - How will visitors be aware of your website?
  
• Interest - What will motivate the visitor to choose you over competitors?
  
• Call to Actions - What will encourage the visitor to book with you, buy from you, call you etc?
  
• Retention - Is it likely that customers will re-visit the site? If so is this to use the site; buy upgrades; replenish their products??? etc. How will you retain your customers? Are you separating those who visit versus those who regularly buy?

Online Marketing Campaigns Questions

When considering clients online marketing campaigns, to help our clients brief the Flashlight team and begin to get a clear understanding of what they are trying to achieve we suggest they complete our Campaign Objectives Sheet.

We have linked our campaign objectives worksheet into our Return on Investment Sales Funnel Calculator ; a useful tool to determine the return of your online marketing spend.

If you are considering increasing awareness of your company, thinking of ways in which to make your website more engaging to visitors, eager to understand more about how people use your site and what motivates them (esp: Calls to Actions) please get in touch with our Sales team on 01202 678777 or via our contact us form. So we can share our ideas too.

First step: You may want to help yourself by viewing and completing the Rocktime Campaign Objectives Sheet here.

Alternatively why not bounce the link to the campaign sheet around your team and ask them for their onsite innovations and campaign ideas you may be surprised at the response.

Happy Planning ;)

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Geek Video of the month

Introducing the “Dr Who” Dalek controlled by iPhone accelerometer. UK Robot enthusiast Steve Carpenter and founder of BotBuilder.co.uk has created the first Iphone controlled Dalek out of a Dalek bubble bath container. This video does use very geeky terms, hence winning the status of geek video of the month, what we particularly like is Steve’s passion for Robots. Take a look at Steve’s Bot Builder website here and find out how his bots go from the drawing board to the packaging box, look at the Bot Birth links on relevant product pages.

Ladder of success

Image and ladder safety tips sourced from http://www.hse.gov.uk/

Alex (our MD) fell of his ladder at the weekend clearing the moss from the top of his garage, 99.9% of him survived, the toe trapped under the ladder felt the brunt of the fall.

Thought to share some health and safety tips on using ladders correctly, for more information visit the Health and Safety Executive site.

Top five tips on how not to fall of your ladder

- Don't climb a ladder in your slippers
- Position the ladder correctly on a firm level surface
- Check the feet of the ladder before use
- Rest the ladder on a firm surface at the top
- Keep your body centred within the ladder

Consultancy Service

As we are a Full Service Digital Agency we offer an array of consultancy to our clients and partners, the vast majority of which as you may expect is focused around web rather than health and safety!! We consult on a whole range of web related tasks from site development to how to build on your social media conversations, aligning our tasks around your business or personal objectives.

Let us help you to climb the ladder of success and make sure your ladder is leaning against the right wall.....sorry couldn't resist the pun!!

To find out more visit our Web Consultancy page or talk to Micky in Rocktime sales.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

We need a Twitter directory for a Twitter directory?!

As Twitter usage continues to increase in the UK, I thought to shed some light on how you can increase your exposure and build on your growing Twitter community.

There are numerous ways to find Twitter users who share the same interests as you by using Twitter search engines, Twitter directories and refining results by category or location. Meanwhile Location targeted Twitter directories are pretty handy if you want advice on “real time local information” i.e. jobs, weather or perhaps sending or receiving a restaurant recommendation.

Which directories should I choose ?

In truth there is no definitive answer to this - we are not the holders of the definitive list of all the Twitter directories, but very few people probably are as new ways of managing contacts are popping up daily – and, at this rate, possibly one every minute.

Should you be in every directory? While it’s desirable, the reality is that this isn’t really possible: given the time it takes to list, it’s unlikely that the admin time would be worth it.
At Rocktime, we find time is more effectively spent listing our company and ourselves on a select few directories, which enables us to spend a much higher percentage of our time communicating with those we chose to follow or find out more about those following us.

Let me share with you a list of a few Twitter directories we use at Rocktime – but first, while we’re talking Twitter Directories, late last year Twitter introduced Twitter lists into public beta.

Twitter promoted these lists as being “A great way to organise the people you follow and discover new interesting accounts”. What this means to Twitter user is that they can create their own lists, or people may list them and display details to their followers. It is quite interesting to see in what lists you reside, as it gives an indication how people perceive you and what you have to say: perhaps you are a blogger listed by a few as a “comedy genius”, but you never knew !

But let’s get back to directories. There are two ways to feature in list directories: either by adding your own lists or by being on lists that have been added. selection of directories looking after these lists are also presented below.

Twitter User Directories

WeFollow – A really easy sign-up and connects to your Twitter account. Login to Twitter, enter your location and choose 5 interests which describe your business or personal brand.
NB: Check the fine print as you don’t need to accept the offer to have your Twitter profile page link to your WeFollow profile page (final box).

Twellow - Register by providing your Twitter email and password. Twellow will then pull relevant information of your twitter profile page to create your profile, making some suggestions on where you should be placed. After validating your email, you then need to decide whether you agree to their suggestions or add other categories (10). You can add more links within Twellow to other social media profiles within the extended bio section, which is pretty handy to spread your reach further.

Just Tweet It – This directory takes a little more time to sign up to than Wefollow or Twellow, as you are required to register before you are sent a password and a link to the profile editor page. Once your profile is complete return to the Just Tweet IT home page, pick 5 categories and enter a short bio on each.

List Directories

Listorious - Go to the Listorious directory and click add list. If you are signed into Twitter, Listorious will automatically connect to your Twitter account and show a form asking for a list URL, a one line description and some descriptive tags. Once your list is added you will be entered into the Listorious ranking table (calculated by number of followers)

TweetDeck - If you work your twitter Account from TweetDeck, then just create a list from there. Once it starts getting followers then it will be automatically included in the directory. Simple.

Location based directories

An easy way to find people geographically close to you is to use the advanced page on Twitter’s search engine which has the option “Near this place”. Results for this are are based on the location field in the twitter BIO, which can be pretty accurate with geo-location from people tweeting from their phones. Some people prefer to use Nearby Tweet for local tweeters www.nearbytweets.com, but be warned - it is pretty distracting when new posts arrive.

Geofollow – The main concept behind this directory is that instead of people being organised by category you are organised by location, but you can still use 3 tags to differentiate yourself from the masses.

Even more directories !

Mashable have compared 15 twitter directories here and have assigned them into four categories: applications, people, politics and strictly business. Soon I think we will need a Twitter directory for the Twitter directories. Hmm...now that’s an idea....

Twitter advice

If you would like any advice on using Twitter to build your community feel free to contact me or talk to a member of the Rocktime Sales team.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

So much Buzz on Google Buzz

On the 9h of Feb 2010 Google announced its latest venture into social media to compete against the likes of Twitter and Facebook. The social media world was watching the “Google Buzz”. The sign up page says Google Buzz will allow you to: “Go beyond status messages, share updates, photos videos and more. Start conversation on things you find interesting”

At a glance of Buzz earlier in the month it appeared quite interesting, I did receive some tweets (@sarahgriffiths) stating that “Buzz is not the new Twitter” and “Buzz.... how do I make it stop”, so not a very positive start, however a product that I would of course investigate. I was also interested to find out how they planned to integrate their other Google products into the package ie: Google Voice.

The concept behind Google Buzz

The design of Google Buzz is similar to that of FriendFeed which was acquired by Facebook back in August 2009. The plan was/is to integrate Google Buzz into Gmail, so that users of Gmail don’t need to go out and find their friends on various social networks, the platforms mission: to streamline the information such as status updates, tweets and media streams (photos, videos, links) whilst also adding location data and related information, with the premise of keeping all the information that matters to you and your email contacts in one place.

The overall concept does/did sound like being a time saver, especially if I can integrate my accounts. Also I favour/favoured the idea that it shares with me information that I like and seeds out the information that I will probably ditch and slide.

The problem

The big problem was the buzz in social networks and in the news (over 2K articles and counting) on Google breaking privacy laws and the notification that a local class action complaint had been filed in San Jose federal court. The law firm who filed the case (Mason LLP) is seeking damages of $100 per day per user for Buzz violating privacy rights. With this statement Google dropped $3.09 to $538.21 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have declined 13 percent this year.

The complaint alleges that Google Buzz broke the law by sharing personal data without users consent. True: there was no opt into the service, and enrolment was automatic to over 176 million Gmail users. Google referred to Buzz as an out of the box solution to organise your online connections and looked positively at the collation of an automatic circle of friends (based on who you regularly email). However what they failed to consider on roll out, was the legal bodies/regulators and from a users perspective a big critic was if a user didn’t change their privacy settings in their profile, then the list of people they regularly contact could be made public. Implications of obtaining this data are pretty big if you consider who people maybe contacting, politicians, journalists, businesses...

Moving on

After a crisis meeting on the 12th of Feb, Google did act quickly to announce plans to allow Gmail users to disable the service altogether and they announced changes on the way that it handles private data and they continue to release statements on how they will continue to improve on the “Buzz experience”.

On the 16th of February 2010 Google admitted to the BBC that it had received a “ferocious backlash from users concerned about intrusions of privacy” and as a result of complaints, Google Buzz have now said that they will only suggest people that a user might want to be friends with.

If you need any tips on disabling Google Buzz, read the article from PC World editor JR Raphael titled: “GoodBye Google Buzz” which how gives a How to Guide on how you can remove Buzz from your Gmail

The future

Google Buzz product manager Todd Jackson said in the interview with the BBC that he was 'very, very sorry' for the upset the privacy errors caused to users. He added: 'If it becomes clear that people don't think we've done enough, we'll make more changes. We know we need to improve things.'

Google Buzz could of potentially been a possible contender to rival the industry leader Facebook, however many analysts and experts in social media are now saying that with this controversial launch there is little chance that Google Buzz will catch up to Facebooks membership levels which currently exceed 400 million.

All pretty dramatic for a new product launch isn't it ! Personally I am staying away from Buzz for a while, until the dust has settled and all the privacy tweaks are ironed out.

As this blog post portrays I am currently undecided as to whether I am a fan of Google Buzz. I know that I am happy with my social networks, I feel that friendfeed is a great place to collate all your communications, so would like to ambassador that.

Personally I don't use Gmail that much for communication, it has been more of a tool for me to receive email subscriptions and updates. Also I am finding that I am unsubscribing from more and more E-news letters, as I now prefer "to go and get" the information rather than be sent it. The majority my social communication is via Facebook, Twitter, Phone & Pub.

Please feel free to comment on this post on how you generally communicate with your social networks ? and whether you believe that Google Buzz has the potential to rock your social world?

My thoughts are with Todd Jackson and his crisis team.

For more information on the legal investigations, read this article from the BBC on 17th February titled: “Google Buzz “breaks privacy laws” says watchdog”:

Keep up to date with changes and find out more about:
Google Buzz here on The Official Google Blog .


Author: Sarah Griffiths

Secret to light fluffy pancakes... add a little beer to the mix!

Dorset Food Blogger Wayne from the Credit Munch Blog invited his readers to share their Pancake recipes today. How did we do ? Well we came up with two recipes which were more than flour, egg, water, milk, sugar and lemon.

Our two pancake stars of the day are Dan & Alex with the below savoury pancake dishes:

Fit as a butchers Dog Pancake

Fill your traditional pancake with grated cheddar, grilled mushrooms and butchers ham. Then serve it with a side of Tomato soup and voila pancake-tastic.

Mushroom Surprise

Fry off 250g of mushrooms in sunflower oil
Add vegetable stock (200ml)
Add 4 spring onions finely sliced
Let the stock simmer and become thick (syrupy)
Add a couple of spoonfuls of cream fresh
Done!

For more pancake recipe ideas visit the Credit Munch blog post simply titled “Pancakes” and discover some more sweet and savoury pancake ideas.

While you're waiting for your pancake batter to cool (that is my top tip), why not find out a bit more on Pancake day traditions from the UK and the World ! over at the BBC Good Food website.

Enjoy your evening and your Pancakes....

Author: Sarah Griffiths